


AT-AT Home

by MissMaris



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, life on Jakku
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-21 02:47:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6035044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissMaris/pseuds/MissMaris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Rey found the AT-AT.</p>
            </blockquote>





	AT-AT Home

Rey had found the AT-AT on accident, really. 

She'd been twelve, and while Unkar allowed her to stay in his shop for shelter at night, (she assumed with some deal made with her parents), it was becoming clear her presence was an annoyance. And, honestly, so was his. She couldn't hide anything from him; no piece of scrap she saved simply because she liked it or keepsake from wrecks that had gone overlooked by other scavengers was safe from Unkar's greedy hands. 

At first, Rey thought she could live in one of the old Star Destroyers, possibly one that had been completely looted and scraped clean, because surely one had to exist. Her first night spent in an old officer's room, however, was terrifying. The ship echoed and creaked with the night time winds, and Rey didn't sleep at all. Rey didn't believe in the spirits of the desert, hadn't been scared by the stories the Teedos would tell in ages, but several times in the night, she thought she heard voices or footsteps marching down corridors, only to peek her head out and discover nothing but gloomy darkness.

Her next try was a dilapidated X-Wing, but it was far to small, even for Rey's standards (which weren't very high to begin with, as she'd slept on the floor of Unkar's shop for years with just a thin blanket and mat).

She tried several other places, and each time she returned the next day defeated, Unkar would grunt with smug satisfaction. She hated that look on his face, and it would drive her to try again, but as her choices became more and more slim, her resolve faltered. The young scavenger had begun to think that she'd be under Unkar's rule forever, or at least until her parents returned for her.

Because, despite what Unkar said, they were coming back.

They were.

One night, after Unkar had left for the day and Rey was huddled in her blanket, she couldn't stop herself. It had been a long time since she had cried over her anything, but the past few months of searching and failing to find a home had taken their toll. Alone in the shop, Rey allowed herself to sob, wailing and cursing Jakku, Unkar, her parents, Riia, the Galaxy, anything and anyone she could think of for giving her this terrible existence.

It's not until there's a sharp clap of thunder that she realizes a storm is raging outside. She stills and listens to the wind, and hears the popping and snapping of the tarps that covered the area around the shop. Rey had been through many a X'us'Riia during her time on Jakku, but there was something peculiar about this. The sky had been perfectly clear the entire day, and as the sun was setting, nothing had seemed amiss. In the darkness, Rey laid herself back down to the shop's floor, listening as the storm continued in full force, eventually lulling her to sleep.

In the morning, she'd awoken to Unkar unceremoniously slamming the shop's main shutter up, bright light pouring in. He ignored her as she quickly tugged her messy brown hair into three buns, before heading out for the day. The storm may have uncovered a new shipyard, she told herself, though the chances were slim, as it didn't seem to have lasted much longer than a few hours in the night. Debris was scattered all over the sand, and Rey had to move pieces away from her speeder before she could even uncover it.

She raced out into the desert, heading in the opposite direction of most of the scavengers, hoping to find something they wouldn't. The farther she went, however, the less likely that became. Rey passed dune after dune, seeing nothing but the normal wrecks that littered the desert. Finally, when the sun was high, Rey stopped on a ridge overlooking a portion of desert. Pulling off her goggles, Rey scanned the area, and still saw nothing. She began to turn her speeder around, when she heard a low grumbling off in the distance. Thinking there was a ship near by, Rey looked up, barely allowing herself to hope, just as a gusting wind came up over the crest of the dune, and shoved her and her speeder down the edge. Rey tumbled, head over heels, and though the ground evened out, she couldn't seem to gain her footing. 

Finally, Rey lost her momentum, coming to a stop on her back in the sand. Winded and dizzy, she took a few moments to catch her breath, before pushing herself up. Shaking as much sand as she could off of her, Rey glanced around, searching for her speeder. It had ended up several yards away, and she began to trudge towards it.

The closer Rey got, however, the more she realized that her speeder hadn't just stopped rolling- it had been stopped. Some sort of rock formation, she guessed. Rey really hoped that her speeder hadn't been damaged. She'd managed, through some luck, to convince Unkar that the speeder could only benefit him, as it would allow her to ride out farther than some of the other scavengers, so she'd at least been allowed that, but Rey had built it all by herself and only with pieces she found in the Junkyards, while still supporting her needs for food and water. Unkar never gave anything away for free.

Heaving, Rey managed to pull the speeder upright, and after a quick assesment, decided there was merely surface damage. Breathing a sigh of relief, Rey leaned back against the rocks-

-only to jump up, because the rocks were hot.

Breathing in sharply, she turned, and took a better look at the formation. Closer up, she could see that parts of the mass were glinting a dull silver in the sunlight. Curious, and with mounting excitement, Rey began to sweep the sand off. She wasn't sure how long she was out there, but by the time the sun was just touching the horizon, Rey had uncovered a fallen walker.

Though excited by her find, Rey realized that she couldn't make it back to Niima outpost before night fell, and began to search for the opening on the bottom of the AT-AT. Clearing away more sand, she finally found the hatch, and after a few moments, popped it open. In the dying light, Rey turned the light on her goggles on and crawled inside.

The air was musty, and as Rey looked around, she realized that the AT-AT had long ago been picked clean. Her spirit dropped somewhat at that, but having nothing to trade would be a problem for another day. Clambering back out of the AT-AT, she wedged her speeder between two of its collapsed legs, and then went back in, sealing the hatch behind her. 

When she awoke the next morning, Rey realized she had actually dreamed: of an island surrounded by water. She never spent another night at Unkar's again.

Over the years, she filled it with her own finds, and thing she made from parts she couldn't trade or that Unkar deemed worthless. It becomes her own house, of sorts, and gives Rey a sense of hope she was quickly losing. With no one around to remind her of her abandonment, or to tell her that her family was not returning, it became easier to face the endless days on Jakku, just trying to survive for herself. 

Years later, when she's nineteen and still living in the AT-AT, she'll happen to hear the distressed beeps of a BB droid. And after a long adventure, while she's climbing the steps of the island in the middle of the ocean to meet Luke Skywalker, she'll suppose that maybe it wasn't just luck that led her to that walker

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there! This is my first try at writing in a long time so feedback is definitely appreciated and welcomed. I tried to make this as canon compliant as possible, considering how little we know about Rey's early life on Jakku. I may write a few more looks at different character's lives in the years leading up to TFA.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
